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29/06/2011

Review: Medal of Honor Heroes I (PSP)

Made by
Francisco S.

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When EA gives you a First Person Shooter for the PSP called Medal of Honor Heroes, you make lemonade... out of tears.

OK so I might have extrapolated a bit. Medal of Honor Heroes is an EA production for the PSP that was released all the way back in 2006 and was the first portable game with the series name after Game Boy. In retrospective the game is Good and multiplayer is still active for those who are interested.

The Good

Difficulty - Although you have three types of difficulty, most of the changes that pass through its settings are the amount of enemies it appears, small timers and bigger damage taken. If you are new to this kind of portable FPS like I was you might go with the Green difficulty, it won't be so bad on you to try and get used to the controls. Remember that you don't have a tutorial in this game.

Variability - On multiplayer one of the good things about this game you have a lot of variability, this meaning that you have things you might want to choose from instead of your ordinary all around US soldier skin. You ending the campaign on single player affects the multiplayer options, the more score you get on the rounds the more prizes you can show off to your friends and this is probably one of the finer things in the game. There are a lot of weapons that you can chose from, considering the game is for a portable of course, this ranging from the Garand to the BAR and that's just on the American side.

Maps - I started the game with the idea of being stuck in somewhere along the lines of "all maps are the same" but I was very wrong, and that's a good thing. Maps vary from the Mediterranean heat to the snowy grounds of Belgium and all of the maps you play on single player show up in multiplayer.

Campaign Intro's - When starting a campaign, you are treated with a briefing from your CO while seeing footage of World War II, now this isn't new per say but it's always very nice to see and get a break from the missions.

Re-playability - The Skirmish mode of the game lets the player customize the missions in a map at your disposal, increasing its re-playability if you don't have wireless available at the time, this is something most actual games miss since it increases the gameplay longevity.

Seeing Familliar Faces - On the single-player you will see familiar faces from older Medal of Honor games. Lieutenant Jimmy Patterson -- star of both the original Medal of Honor and Medal of Honor Frontline, Sergeant John Baker, from Medal of Honor Allied Assault / Breakthrough and Lieutenant William Holt from Medal of Honor European Assault, they will all be in a new chapter that will make a decisive push further into Nazi occupied territory.

The Bad

Artificial Intelligence - The A.I. of the game in general is extremely weak, enemy and friendly both get stuck, glitch and possibly have their weapons either jammed since most of the enemies wanting to charge you or having an infinite clip due to being bugged. If you are unfortunate to be deep in the map's mission and your friendlies die you won't see them coming back but you will see the green dots on the mini-map just standing there, waiting for you, while enemies just jump you from everywhere and just literally spawn, yes the literal spawning sense in front of you.

The Controls - Possibly one of the biggest flaws of this game are the controls, and this isn't the game's fault, that rests entirely on the PSP, you can't expect people to get used to use a viewing control using the right buttons or change the inventory while moving makes it almost impossible, worse is the nub and the Left button, in the nub you need to double tap it to spring, and in the left control if you tap it quickly is a melee and if you press it you go to the cross-hairs, these controls can be extremely frustrating and not avoidable, you will see yourself aiming instead of using melee and trying to run but only tap-dancing around. These controls can be changed of course but you might be challenged to get used to the very awkward and unreliable controls.

The Graphics - The graphics for it's time were good, so don't get me wrong here. What I'm trying to point out is that something is wrong with stairs or something that is either higher or lower then you and you need to either go up or down on said stairs. The hit detection is also a problem that you might encounter during your fight, you think you just gave an head-shot through the weapons iron-sights? Think again and I'm not talking about the helmets, the hit detection is bad to a point on repeating a shot multiple times in the head of a AI player in the prone position but clearly with its head sticking out and it can be extremely frustrating.

Multiplayer - This is were the game delivers its maximum value. MOH:Heroes can put up to 32 players fight against each other without a sweat and you can make use of the skins (24 of them) you acquired in single-player and the wide range of the Garand, the Thompson, The BAR, the Bazooka, the pistol, its German counterparts, a shotgun. The gameplay modes are Deathmatch (Everyman for himself, you win if you have eliminated all the people around you), Infiltration (You might also know this mode as Capture the Flag. Two teams fighting to grab the opposite flag), Demolition (Two teams fight to either blow up or defend the objective), Hold the Line (Two teams fight for overall control of a certain point), Battlelines (hold the certain points on the map for an accumulated score, which team reaches the score first wins) and Domination (control key points on the map, whoever hold the location longest wins the match). If your a stat nut and want to be the best of the best you can also check the leader board who ranks the Top 100 and there is also a ranking system to fight for.

The game is definitely worth renting just to check out the multiplayer you won't be disapointed (only if there isn't anyone anymore playing the game since it aged considerably), but if your going for the single-player I wouldn't even recommend renting it, it's that bad, you will find yourself bored quickly enough and really annoyed about your team-mates sounds and stupidity.

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